The reviews on
the Woodman website are invariably positive. The reason for this is that
people volunteer to do the reviews and naturally they volunteer to review
acts that impress them. So as he started playing Stamping Ground I
borrowed a pen and some paper and started writing – this was someone I
really liked and so I’m doing the review.

But I’ve got
ahead of myself, the evening started off with the support acts. Bryn
Phillips, Nothing to Prove and Paul Bedingfield’s pal, Mike, who came to
the club on an annual visit and treated us to a couple of well performed
songs, which got everyone singing along; it’s a shame he can’t make it
more often. As usual an excellent set from NTP with a new one, Tall Ships,
which was a good fit for them; keep it in the act!

Back
to Rod Clements. What I liked about Stamping ground was the way he played
slide guitar. Bottleneck on ring finger, lots of fretting and thumb-work
clever stuff and very effective. I liked his voice as well, very mellow.
An excellent start to his set. Then another bluesy number“Train in G” – again a slide number. That resonator guitar of
his is something special – a beautiful sound. He put down the Dobro
after playing an old Lindisfarne song, “Dream Within Dream”, which
amazingly they never recorded and picked up a standard acoustic guitar to
play “All Grown Up and Nowhere to Go” a song from his new Odd Man
Out” album. It was a reflective song with
some poignant lyrics - “When the world gets different and you’re the
same”. Then we had “Touch Me Not” a song with a dark theme
reminiscent of some of NickCave’s
pieces.After that he brought
on the Dobro again for “No More Cane on the Brazos”
a classic American folk/blues songwhich
he played brilliantly. Then he ended the set which for me was the song of
the evening, “Existentially Yours”, with a clever take on
fundamentalist bigotry.

He started off the second half with a couple more blues, “Working My Way
Back Home”and “Blue
Interior” before doing the title track off his new album “Odd Man
Out”. Then we had the inevitable “Meet Me On The Corner”, which
pleased theLindisfarne
following.The set carried on
again with a mix of slide and standard acoustic, but this time there were
one or two songs with a more powerful driving rhythm, particularly “New
Best Friend”, a song about Tony Blaire and GWB. In this half the song
that struck me was RagTown,
about the construction of the Hoover Dam. When he sang the
line “I hear the turbines humming” I let the imagery span the years
and I could feel the anticipation and excitement of those construction
workers. Great song! After “New Best Friend”, his last song, he did Whiskey
Highway
for an encore which got everyone singing along. A great end to the
evening.

All in all it was an excellent
evening with a just about full house and a very attentive and appreciative
audience